Crash Test Bunnies
by Angrybee
Summary: Ryuichi wants to rearrange his own face, for science, as a human crash test dummy. Tohma feels alternately ill, and fancy. Silly answer to Aja's Gravitation Automotive Safety challenge of May 2006.


DISCLAIMER: Gravitation is the property of Maki Murakami and associates.  
This is a mere work of fanfiction, and meant only to venerate.

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Crash Test Bunnies

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"Excuse me?" Tohma blinked repeatedly as he held the form between his thumb and forefinger, dangling it over his desk as if worried that he might need a Geiger counter to assess the true dangers of this particular sheet of paper. 

Ryuichi kept spinning in the chair. Tohma had known it might not be the best of ideas to get office chairs that spin -and- roll, but sometimes he'd do just about anything to give Ryuichi chances to entertain himself. And by "entertain himself", Tohma most certainly meant "stay out of Tohma's hair". 

Still spinning, Ryuichi answered, "I want to get my face rearranged! For science!"

Tohma felt ill. 

"And for the safety of NG employees!"

Really, quite ill indeed. In his stomach. No. A headache. "Please stop spinning, Ryuichi."

"And for the glory of humanity!" Ryuichi looked thoughtful, or rather he might have been looking thoughtful, but because of the spinning, Tohma just couldn't tell. "And also aliens, if they need glory. And fuzzy animals, too. Especially bunnies. And slugs. Nobody ever does anything for the glory of slugs."

Tohma couldn't take any more. Another thirty seconds of watching Ryuichi spin and his antique Persian rug might acquire a bile-laden scent not typically appreciated in a business setting. He grabbed the back of the chair, and stopped it mid-spin. Ryuichi, for his part, barely avoided flying out of the chair, due to inertia, by grabbing the arm-rests.

"What good is a spinny-chair if you don't spin in it?" Such a mournful question. Ryuichi punctuated it by jutting out his bottom lip.

"Would you focus?" 

Ryuichi smiled, forgetting the fun of spinning almost immediately, and reached up to poke at the paper in Tohma's hand. "It's a permission slip."

"It is written in crayon, Ryuichi."

"I know. I lost the original when I was trying to..." Kumagoro appeared, and the rest of the sentence was mumbled into the back of the bunny's head. Tohma made out "egg salad" and "explosion" and "Aizawa-kun". He decided -not- to ask.

Tohma flipped the page around and attempted to make out the chicken-scratch writing. "Please excuse Sakuma Ryuichi from work today, as he has volunteered to become a crash test dummy for the Mondo Motor Company. Signed, large bald president of the Mondo Motor Company."

"I forgot his name," Ryuichi explained, "When I was re-writing it."

Tohma wondered if anyone ever forgot his name, and if so, how they would describe him? He decided "erudite yet fancy president of NG" would be rather appropriate. The feathers and the hats. Fancy. Fancy like a pimp. An elfin pimp. How amusing. Tohma decided to imagine Shuichi as being a small annoying hobbit. With big hairy feet. Well, Shuichi probably didn't have big hairy feet, but maybe he would when he got older. Tohma's feet, however, were quite dainty...

Ryuichi snapped his fingers in front of Tohma's face. "Focus, Tohma, focus!"

"Stop that." Tohma batted Ryuichi's hand away and put on his strictest Ryuichi-handling expression, in which he maintained a small smile and a firm gaze. "You can not become a crash test dummy."

"But, I want to rearrange my face. Like Picasso."

"Picasso rearranged everyone else's faces. You're thinking of Van Gogh. And I think cutting off one of your ears may be detrimental to your main profession -- which, if I must remind you, is music. It requires good hearing."

Kumagoro's paw started blindly feeling out Ryuichi's nose. "I want to put my nose down below my chin. That way, there's less to bump into when I kiss someone. And also, I can smell their neck while we're snogging." As if to illustrate, Kumagoro proceeded to make out with Ryuichi's left hand.

"That's..." Actually fairly clever, Tohma had to admit. He'd get his left eye literally put into the back of his head. How useful would that be? "Would you please focus? You know very well that it doesn't work that way, Ryuichi."

"Sure it does! Zooomzoom vrrrrmmmmvrrrm squeeeeEeEEeeEe. BOOM! Explodey. Face rearrangement."

"Yes, but..."

"Hey, yeah! I could drive with my butt."

"You can't drive at all. You're the most lousy driver I know."

Ryuichi nodded sagely. "I know. That makes me a perfect crash test dummy."

Tohma knew he was going to get nowhere with this line of questioning. Ryuichi had -something- on his mind, something bungled up in his thought processes, and it would definitely not be resolved by logic and reasoning. But, there was absolutely no reason to go ballistic. Surely this car company had no intention of actually crashing Ryuichi -into- anything. That would be ludicrous. Think of the possibility for injury, and more specifically, lawsuits. No, something far more sensible had to be occurring and Ryuichi had turned it into some strange fantasy for his own amusement.

"I'm calling him." Tohma nodded resolutely, and picked up his sleek faux-antique phone. With a touch of the "zero" button, he was patched through to his secretary. "Get me the president of the Mondo Motor Company."

Ryuichi jumped up, leaned over the desk, and caused several diligently straightened piles of paper to become askew. Tohma's phone was ripped from his hands. "And ice cream. Also get us ice cream."

The secretary, for her part, knew Tohma and Ryuichi well enough to respond, "Yes, Seguchi-san. And no, Sakuma-san. You'll ruin your dinner."

Ryuichi frowned and handed the phone back. He settled back into the spinny-chair to play quietly with Kumagoro. The game of the moment was Nurse Bunny. Ryuichi had thought that one up when he had the flu last fall, and was forced to endlessly watch soap operas. Nurse Bunny crawled on Ryuichi's head, attempting to do psychic brain surgery in order to fix his amnesia.

Tohma, however, learned that the Mondo Motor Company was -not- offering to employ Ryuichi as a crash test dummy, and instead only wanted to make a commercial about vehicle safety. With Ryuichi's cool-appeal, they could probably convince many young people to adopt safer driving habits. There would be some slight modifications to Ryuichi's face, but with makeup, rather than by way of automotive catastrophe.

"Thank you for clearing this up, Omogata-san. You've been most helpful. I'll send Ryuichi over right away." Tohma hung up the phone, and felt very relieved. He sunk into his office chair, and contemplated an early lunch. 

"Because of our fans." Ryuichi tilted his head back, and stared blankly at the ceiling. He'd gone from squirmy to intensely serene in zero-point-eight seconds. With as fast as Ryuichi could change gears emotionally, it did seem almost appropriate to label him a crash test dummy. Though, if you weren't prepared for the crash, while hanging out with Ryuichi, then -you- were the dumb one. "Because it isn't groovy. They see our music videos and we're driving off cliffs in shiny cool sports cars. Or drinking and driving. Or talking on cellphones and speeding... It's...irresponsible. Of us. An irresponsible image."

Tohma's eyelids began to malfunction. He just couldn't stop blinking. Had Sakuma Ryuichi just said something was...IRRESPONSIBLE? A man who never took responsibility for -anything-, and blamed every accident on a stuffed toy? No. Certainly Ryuichi had not said -irresponsible-. Someone must have replaced Tohma's normal Ryuichi with a very low-grade Ryu-bot. It just was not at all possible. "Ryuichi, do you really feel...that way?"

Ryuichi closed his eyes, and nodded ever-so-slightly. 

Tohma's smile became slightly less insincere, and he picked up a pen and paper to crib some notes for the legal department regarding Ryuichi's commercial-making enterprise. Being Ryuichi's friend was sometimes difficult, but at moments like this, Tohma remembered why he put up with the silliness and childlike antics. Because Ryuichi had always felt that what you say with your music reflected the kind of person you wanted to be. Maybe not the person you were -now-. Not the person who became annoyed while waiting for the elevator. Not the person who fibbed a little on their tax forms. Not the person who secretly talked about a good friend behind their back.

But the perfection of a deeper self.

And you couldn't show others a faulty image. Letting them know that it was the -music- that elevated someone, and not the expensive exploding cars and irresponsible pop-star behavior that made them special, was what Ryuichi wanted to do.

"Ryuichi...?"

Ryuichi smiled, and Kumagoro reappeared from nowhere, "Tohma?"

Tohma brushed a wisp of blond hair behind his ear. "Do you think I could be termed...elfin?"

Man and bunny both nodded like bobble-headed dolls. "Oh definitely. You'd be a very pimpin' elf. And those Keebler pipsqueaks would so be your bitches."

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"Come see! Come see!" 

Tohma felt certain his arm was about to be torn off. Ryuichi was pulling -way- too hard. The bouncing didn't help, either. "Ryuichi, I have a meeting in ten minutes."

"It's only a one minute commercial, na no da." Ryuichi all but shoved Tohma into a chair in one of the small conference rooms, and hopped over to the television. "Look, look. This is awesome."

After some amount of button-poking, Ryuichi finally got the tape to start playing. The commercial opened at a party. But, not any normal party. All the partygoers were stuffed animals. A purple kangaroo. A yellow cow. A fuzzy rooster. A rather dopey looking snake. And Kumagoro. 

And they were all paired up with alcoholic beverages. 

"It's ginger ale," Ryuichi explained. "Kumagoro doesn't really drink. Stunt booze, you see?"

In the next scene, the stuffed animals were going for their vehicle. Kumagoro (whose voice sounded suspiciously like Ryuichi's) said, "Hey, it's not cool to drink and drive. I'm going to get a cab. You guys should come!"

But, all the other stuffed animals just laughed at Kumagoro and called him a Very Dumb Bunny.

Dejectedly, Kumagoro hopped away while the other animals climbed into their car and sped off. The next scenes, Tohma had to admit, surely could have been from some very trippy music video. The stuffed animals were laughing, and drinking, and not paying attention to where they were driving. The car wove in and out of traffic.

"Stunt driver," Ryuichi explained. "In a specially equipped stunt car."

The crash was, of course, fantastic. Slow-motion carnage. Squealing tires and screeching metal. Cars crumpling on impact. The drunk animals bursting through glass windows, getting torn limb from limb. Fuzz and stuffing everywhere. 

The camera switched to a close-up shot of the decapitated toy rooster.

"Stunt cock," Ryuichi said with a giggle.

Tohma groaned inwardly. He should have seen that one coming.

And then, suddenly, the commercial switched to Ryuichi and Kumagoro. Ryuichi had been made up to look like the world's sexiest crash test dummy. In the commercial, Ryuichi waved, and then Kumagoro waved. Back at NG, their other selves waved back.

"Only a really dumb bunny would drink and drive," Commercial-Ryuichi said. Commercial-Kumagoro nodded in agreement. 

Then the screen blanked, and the logo for the Mondo Motor Company appeared.

"Did you like it?"

Tohma had to admit, it was a fairly good commercial. Funny, but cool. And it got the point across. "I did."

Ryuichi jumped out of his chair and struck a happy pose, peace sign and all. "Great! Because I signed you up to do one on seatbelt safety next week."

Tohma put his fingers to his temple. He was definitely forming a headache. "Ryuichi..."

Ryuichi scratched his head, and murmured apologetically, "Sorry. No decapitated elves though."

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The end.

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This ficlet was in answer to imayb1's May 1, 2006 Gravitation Auto Safety challenge. I hope you found at least one or two bits amusing. Thanks so much for reading! 


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